


these ghosts my hopes the sand the sea

by spacenarwhal



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Future Fic, Romance, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18730150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: The war to end all wars ends not with dragon-fire and the cries of babes, but with a single blade plunged quick between the ribs of a mad woman.No one sees it happen. But it happens. A girl wipes the brown-red blood off her blade on a patch of hardy grass, too stubborn to die in the face of winter. In the distance, behind the ancient stone that saw her father murdered, that displayed the grotesque death mask the executioner’s sword had turned his once handsome face to, a single horn’s call goes out.[Or: After the war, Arya makes her way home.]





	these ghosts my hopes the sand the sea

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT WAS THAT EPISODE Y'ALL
> 
> Clearly it drove me to fic. 
> 
> Spoilers for 8x04 but only for one really specific thing. Everything else is just my wild speculation. 
> 
> Title from the song by Daphne Loves Derby.

The war to end all wars ends not with dragon-fire and the cries of babes, but with a single blade plunged quick between the ribs of a mad woman.

No one sees it happen. But it happens. A girl wipes the brown-red blood off her blade on a patch of hardy grass, too stubborn to die in the face of winter. In the distance, behind the ancient stone that saw her father murdered, that displayed the grotesque death mask the executioner’s sword had turned his once handsome face to, a single horn’s call goes out.

It is a quiet sound, it rings out and then falls silent, one moment, two, carried away on the sea-salt sick air and out into the morning.

She’s already sheathed her cleaned blade and mounted her horse, her back to the city and all it’s dead monarchs, before the second alarm sounds.

-

She does not go back to Winterfell.

She cannot be Arya Stark there, not anymore. Her fear that too many would look on her and see the slip of a child she once was has been replaced almost entirely with the sickening dread of those who would look on her with anything like admiration. They would call her a hero and never once ask about the other eyes she’s closed forever, never ask about how she hid when her father was taken, how she slid into the darkness while they sewed Grey Wind’s head to Robb’s body and tossed her mother into a filthy river.

They would never ask her about how easy it was in the end, to kill not one Mad Queen, but two.

-

She travels without name or direction for months. She stays off the King’s Road, stops at inns laid low by war and always makes sure to leave more gold in their coffers than she’s asked for. She sleeps in flea ridden beds and out beneath the open sky. She is a direwolf and does not shiver in the winter cold.

 Sometimes she catches the flutter of raven wings rustling in the trees and wonders if her brother is watching her. Sometimes she tosses rocks at the birds until they fly away. Other times she asks that Sansa know she’s alright.

-

Arya has been traveling nearly half a year when she hears tell that the new king and his council have made a decision. That the iron throne should be forsaken and the seven kingdom’s work in unison to the benefit of one another and their people.

“They’ve got funny ideas in the North.” One of the farmhands speaking says to the innkeeper.

“Can’t be worst than all these lords and ladies shitting all over one another for a fancy seat.” The innkeeper replies.

Arya has no head for politics, but she’s inclined to agree.

-

Sansa might have the coloring of a Tully but she has all the authority of their father in her glance when she receives Arya. Winterfell is still a work in progress—slow progress—but it’s outermost wall is nearly fully repaired, many of the fallen buildings at least partially erected, the outer fields populated once more by the few who survived the Long Night outside Winterfell’s walls.

“Bran said you were coming.” Sansa says and there’s a second’s glimmer of the giggling girl who used to drive Arya mad with her endless sighing over knights and maidens. But she disappears again, hidden behind the lovely face of the somber woman her sister’s become.

“Didn’t come to welcome me himself though?” Arya replies drily, studying her sister’s solar. Arya wonders that Sansa doesn’t use Mother’s or Father’s old rooms, rightful Lady of Winterfell that she is.

“He doesn’t come in as often anymore.” Sansa answers, frown nearly invisible at the corners of her lips.

 She stands, and Arya watches the way her grey skirts gracefully sway around her feet. Sansa used to move like every step was a dance but now she reminds Arya of a swordsman, every step carefully considered as though preparing for attack. Her hands are not soft when they cup Arya’s cheeks, but they smell of lavender and fresh snow, like Mother’s hands on storming nights when they would gather in her solar and she would tell them old river tales while she sewed.

Sansa pulls her close, her limbs strong and her grip stronger, and Arya grips her back just as strongly, fingers digging into the leather works adorning the bodice of her sister’s gown (Sansa still at the ready to battle for the North even now that the war is over. But the war will never be over, it lives on inside them, in all the names and all the empty space left behind by what they’ve lost. It lives on and on and Arya knows it doesn’t matter how many kings and queens Jon makes or if all of King’s Landing is crushed to gravel, what’s been done will never die until the last person who remembers it is set upon their pyre).

“Welcome home.” Sansa whispers against her hair and Arya nearly reminds her that she isn’t staying, that she can’t stay, but she doesn’t. Because in Sansa’s arms she is a Stark again, Horseface and Arya and nuisance and sister. The closest thing to home she has left.

-

Bran isn’t really there anymore. There’s a body in a chair, draped all over in furs to keep away the cold, brown hair and dark eyes and her father’s nose upon his face but he isn’t anything the brother she remembers.

Arya sits with him out beneath the same heart tree where she plunged her steel into the side of that monster, where he shattered like so much ice and crumbled to nothing. Arya still bears the scar on her throat, his unliving fingers marking her skin like they do Bran’s arm, livid and yet no different from any other scar obtained in battle.

Bran isn’t really Bran but Arya isn’t really Arya anymore either so she doesn’t let it bother her that they spend their time in near endless silence, Arya with a whetstone in hand or else nothing, sitting there in the snow listening to the wind move in the trees.

The last time she was here the air smelled of nothing but ash and death and fear. It is good to know the smell can fade, that the earth can make itself new again.

“I can be your family.” Bran says abruptly, eyes burning bright and yet unfocused in the same breath.

The words itch down Arya’s spine like a caterpillar, she nearly shivers to shake them off. Instead she pulls the soft pelt collar of the new cloak Sansa made for her closer. “Don’t be stupid,” she answers flatly, “You’re still my family.”

Bran doesn’t say anything, gaze sliding pass her into the woods. Arya wonders what he sees.

-

“He asked me to marry him.” Arya says that night, Bran’s words still digging through her brain. “Who?” Sansa asks, turning over on her side. There is a fire blazing in Arya’s own room, the sheets warmed and only waiting for her to slip beneath them, but she can’t bring herself to leave yet, belly full of warm wine and her sister closer than she’s been in longer than she bothers counting.

“Gendry.”

Sansa’s smooth face wrinkles, and Arya knows she’s puzzling out the details, the how and when of it, but blessedly doesn’t ask.

“You didn’t say yes.”

Arya rolls her eyes, because that much is obvious. She rode off at dawn and left him behind and he’s not here now. Last she heard the Lord of Storm's End is a magnificent ruler, wise and just. Not that she’s made the habit of searching out news.

“He said he loved me.” Arya continues, and though it’s been nearly a year she can see it in her mind clearly, his face as he knelt before her, the wild joy in his eyes when he told her none of it would matter without her.

“You never wanted to be some lord’s wife.” Sansa says, and her hand curls over Arya’s wrist where her arms lies between them on the mattress.

“No,” Arya answers, honest with herself and her sister, though that doesn’t stop the delicate clink of something so akin to loss that echoes in her bones. “I didn’t.”

“Do you miss him?” Sansa asks, curiosity coloring her features, her pale eyes sharp as she waits for Arya’s answer.

“I miss a lot of things.” Arya answers. She misses Father and Mother, Robb and Rickon, Old Nan, Nymeria, Syrio. She misses the Winterfell of her youth, the promise of summer. She misses Bran and Jon both, alive and yet so far removed they might as well be gone as well, each them buried under the mantle of responsibilities too great for Arya to understand or envy.

“Do you miss him though?” Sansa presses, determined, and Arya pulls her arm away as though Sansa’s touched burned the same as any wight’s.

“Not today.” Arya says, because its true enough.

-

Sansa asks her to meet her in the granary, “I want your input on the supply stores, if it’s alright.” She asks, voice somewhere between beseeching and commanding.

“Uh,” Arya says, between mouthfuls of cold porridge, “Alright.”

She doesn’t know what insights she can provide the Lady of Winterfell, especially when Sansa’s been acting Warden for over a year and Arya was sleeping in a hayloft last week, but she agrees to it all the same, heading to the granary at the appointed time.

“What’s it you wanted me to see?” she asks, already looking up at the food stores piled against the walls. Nothing like what they used to have, but they’re still focusing on rebuilding, and for a first effort it isn’t bad. Nothing to feed three armies, but she knows her sister is more concerned with feeding the North’s hungry now than she is with filling conquesting soldiers.

Except it isn’t Sansa who greets her there at all, its Gendry, looking panicked and somewhat crossed like he’s the one whose just been thrown headfirst into a frozen river.

Arya blinks. He doesn’t disappear.

“I shouldn’t have proposed to you.” Gendry says just as Arya’s mouth regains the ability to move. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Storm's End?”

They stare each other.

“I only meant—”

“Why are you—”

Gendry comes closer, red in the face. He holds his hands up like he wants to touch her face but thinks better of it. He steps back. He’s wearing a clean tunic, a direwolf howling over his left shoulder. Arya recognizes her sister’s needlework, perfect to the smallest stitch.

“You’d have a made a terrible lady.” Gendry says, “And I would be lost as a lord. But I meant all the rest of it just the same.”

Her mouth moves, her tongue dumbfounded. “Did Bran tell you I was coming?”

Gendry raises an eyebrow. “No, your sister did. But I suppose—”he rubs at his hair, still shorn short, “listen, I’m just, I want to apologize. For carrying on like that. I just—” He shrugs. “Didn’t meant to scare you off.”

Arya scowls. “You didn’t scare me off.”

Gendry frowns, “Seem to remember you leaving pretty quick.”

“We were fighting a war.”

“We’d just won one.” Gendry fires back, impatient.

“What?” Arya asks, her own temper getting the better of her. “Did you expect me to accept. To drop everything and go play Lord and Lady of the castle while all the rest of them went off to fight Cersei.”

Gendry rolls his eyes, “Don’t be stupid. Of course not. But I could have helped you—I could have done something—something useful instead of just sitting around here wondering if you were ever coming back.”

Something knots in her chest, tighter than a rope meant to hang a condemned man pulls when the floor drops out beneath their feet.

“What? Why didn’t you go to Storm's End?”

“Because I don’t have any business there.” Gendry answers, like Arya’s being intentionally thick. “My forge is here. My liege-lady is here. My—it took a lot of bloody work to get to Winterfell Arry, you can’t of honestly expected me to move on so quickly.”

“But you—you’re Lord Gendry Baratheon.”

Gendry laughs, but whatever brittle anger Arya expects to the sound is nowhere to be heard. Instead he sounds as happy as a child as their nameday.

“You haven’t been listening at all, have you.” He says affectionately, coming closer now, some of his earlier nerves shed. In their place is a soft fondness that makes her insides ripple, like a cat’s back when it’s stroked, lazy and content. “I’m no lord. Never have been. I was a bastard born. Nearly died as one too, more times than I can count.”

He touches her then, one roughened hand cupping her face, thumb brushing over the scar dragging overtop her left eye, the skin dimpled where the stone cut her to the bone during battle. Arya nearly closes her eyes.

“I don’t need a lady.” He says, voice quiet. “And I don’t need a wife. Not one bound by laws or a septon or gods. But you told me once that you could be my family, Arya Stark, and now I’m offering you the same. If you’ll have me. I can be your family.”

Family dies. Arya nearly says. Family leaves. Family can be lost or surrendered or abandoned. Family can drive you to madness or despair. It can move you to terrible things.

(She slit Cersei’s throat and watched as her eyes went wide with fear, watched her choke on her own life’s blood on the steps of the throne she’d hurt so many in life to claim as her own. And it wasn’t until later, listening from the shadows as the Dragon Queen spoke calmly and elegantly about burning the memory of the Lannisters out of the land, out of time itself, as though the act she were proposing were nothing more than weeding an overgrown garden, that Arya knew what needed to be done. Because Jon would never be safe, no matter how many pledges he made, or how deeply he sank, the North would never be safe so long as their pack refused to yield. Gendry would never be safe, a man turned to a figure head in the name of earning the people’s approval. Robert Baratheon, the Bull himself come back to living flesh to do the Dragon’s bidding. So Arya did the only thing she could to keep her family safe.)

“Don’t be stupid.” Arya says, hands going to his throat, pulling him close by the nape of his neck. He bends towards her, closer still, his mouth still as warm and soft and lovely as she remembers when it moves against hers. “You are my family.”

-

 “Are you coming back?” Sansa asks when she bid them goodbye at the gate. She presented Arya with an armful of new tunics and breeches to go alongside new boots given the night before. Later, when Arya inspects them closer she’ll find a direwolf needled onto each and every one, the designs intricate enough to know her sister had been working on them long before Arya herself knew where she was going.

“Eventually.” Arya answers, pulling Sansa into a hug herself before climbing onto her horse.

“And are you going to bring my smith back?” Sansa asks drily, pale face tinged pink with cold and mirth.

“Eventually.” Arya replies, grinning at the awkward fumble of courtesies that gave way to a hug, Sansa’s good-humor at the awkwardness of the exchange enough to make Gendry bashful. Yes, he would have a made a terrible lord, Arya thinks to herself, pleased. “We’ve got a lot of land to cover.”

“And some sea.” Gendry adds, better now that he’s on his own horse. They’re going to make their way to Storm's End and call on the Onion Knight before they venture elsewhere, the Lord of Storm's End had practically demanded it when Gendry had asked Arya to write Ser Davos to tell of their decision to travel a while.  

“There’s such a lot of world.” Arya says, and leads the way.


End file.
